Lake of Two Mountains Read online

Those who live on the island

  survey the lake’s changeable face,

  theatre of water and sky.

  They live among deciduous trees

  growing down into the lake.

  Maples’ thick leaves move the shadows. Sumac

  tropicate near the bridge,

  red velvet torches, green parrot fronds.

  Beeches with pachyderm bark.

  The small pinnated island lies light

  on the water. Those who live there

  know worry: the lake’s currents

  and the whipped rivers of air.

  They pray that the trees, their deep roots,

  will fasten, keep this feather of land

  from lifting into the wind.

  WALKING THE ISLAND ROAD AFTER DINNER

  Walking the narrow raised road

  under the wings

  of your parents, father starting

  to whistle, freed from the house

  of the sisters-in-law, blackbird

  with hands in his pockets,

  mother in polished tan cotton shorts,

  house sparrow, wings folded

  under her soft blousy wrap.

  Asking nothing.

  What were their thoughts? You

  are content just to stroll

  with them,

  hover close to their silky coverts.

  Sometimes you stop

  to burst the orangey weed-flowers,

  tap them or blow, seed after seed

  arcing onto the road. You and your sister

  seeding the road. Asking nothing:

  not the name of the flowers,

  or the tune or the time.

  Or how

  your parents kept hidden

  their back-mounted wings.

  FRÈRE GABRIEL'S LIFE 4

  It is penance. No meat. No speech. No guest who’s not family. No book that’s not God’s. No choice that is not Père Abbot’s. No fish unless sick. In winter frost thickens the windows and walls. Bed at seven like children. Up at two when night still blinds the cold panes and the bells begin clanging. Kneel then, head heavy with hood. Nine offices, each with its own special bell. At least nine kinds of work, each a penance. Milking in shadowy stalls, hardly seeing cow or the pail. Filing out to break stones big as beds. Pulling weeds, haying fields filled with sun. Hay dust swarms the barn. Inside, mopping floors, the refectory stagnant with beans, cabbage soup. Dipping candles, stitching stiff boots. Idle hands cradle demons. Even the silence is thick with merciless sounds: Frère Marcel wheezing through Mass; Frère Jean smacking his lips through each meal. Offering these up. Each penance wings a soul past the stone walls to rest in the willows that weep on the shore.

  FRÈRE GABRIEL'S LIFE 5

  His chewed-up lips. His hands like spades under loose sleeves. How he allows what happens each day. Permits sun to bake his pink, freckled brow. Allows Frère Martin to nudge him at Mass, eyelids shut tight as freshwater clams. How long this monk kneels. His slow gait, his impossible pace, the way he places his fork on the plate. Carefully lifts his light voice in high praise, stills his lips when in prayer. It is not so much that Frère Gabriel talks to God; every monk does. But that God talks to him.

  WHEN HEAT FALLS

  Mid-summer, the lake stares down the sun and the sky,

  what was once thought of

  as heaven.

  A hot lazy raft rocks its complaints twenty feet from shore.

  In the afternoon haze sadness

  loses all definition. The sun

  is another country, a martyrdom

  of touch.

  At forty-five degrees

  the air congeals, props up trees,

  human bodies, houses, erratic stones.

  The heat lowers

  onto the lake’s lassitude,

  its small worn-out wrinkles.

  It hardly breathes.

  Fish bloat on the surface, loll their bellies,

  wash ashore, pallid, appear,

  disappear between rocks.

  The lake prays to Oka’s two highest hills,

  their rolling loft, unseen from the south.

  June bugs pierce the dazed hearing world.

  Words abandon flesh. Chokecherries,

  reeds, milkweed froth the lake’s shore.

  The shoreline slowly recedes,

  beginning to shrink, the lake rising

  in droplets, almost nothingness,

  on its way into the sky.

  CARDINALS, CROWS

  Hear them piping one by one:

  we are here, we are here.

  Cardinal solos –

  suns behind clouds,

  almost papal.

  Look up: each too divine

  to appear.

  Crows do not hide. They are

  medieval friars selling indulgences,

  safe passages, relics they lift from the eaves.

  Holy cards, greased bones, bottle caps.

  Crow tricks –

  everything is at risk.

  Holy, profane,

  hidden, in plain sight –

  the end of the world

  will arrive

  in the mouth of a bird.

  LAKE 2

  drawing cowls of quiet around uncertain space sinking through pebbles and coarse grains of sand no sound it spreads into grass lies flat for seasons timeless hovering even at shore a presentiment a mirage shape-shifting mesmer holding the surrounding rocks in place through reverence alone the air above claims no geography the lake needs nothing but river’s brown mouth solitary quiet as the dragonfly that quilts nimbussed gloss as the eel that ribbons the squelch as unlit fish surveying beneath cirrussed weeds even when shirred when breezes scoop atoms of foam even when the world slants with rain and with wind the lake won’t complain white noise alone nothing the ear can locate even in early morning when heron spears frog no sound will ring out

  GHOSTS MOVING IN FORESTED SHADE

  light through the low woods

  unbinds clavicle soles

  trompe l’oeil

  deciduous shadow and shudder

  quiver with unabashed shine

  what is fixed in the truth is in flux

  sleights the eye there is goodness

  there are ghosts moving

  faster than wind through low bush and leaves

  they move more surely than light

  SUMMER ENDS

  mist then as August tapers

  to September lifts

  the lake’s surfeit heat

  night chills the breakfast milk

  oak leaves still frill

  the kaleidoscoped sky

  the mist slips off by ten

  no one has died yet

  no one swims until noon

  no one speaks of the end

  leaf water child

  THINGS CHANGE

  a bird keening in flight

  the shape of a marsh hawk shadow

  with malevolent wings

  the lake is benign now steadfast

  why imagine it flying away

  small mammal heart

  in its beak

  LAST DAY

  Variation on a glosa – Archibald Lampman’s “Thunderstorm”

  toss in the windrack up the muttering wind

  the leaves hang still above the weird twilight

  the hurrying centres of the storm unite

  an afternoon rain

  starts without enough

  warning though

  to be honest you carry

  a borrowed umbrella

  walk the road

  for the last time above you<
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  the leaves toss in the windrack

  up the muttering sky

  the sky takes on rubbings

  of charcoal rain-

  patter paces your steps

  but still you will not

  turn back the umbrella

  staves off the worsening wet

  at roadside the leaves

  hang still

  in the weird light

  you race rain for the cottage

  where you lived as a child

  quirk of the storm sluicing you

  onto this particular porch

  side door locked

  new owners away you brace

  the umbrella’s inadequate shield

  wind shoves

  against you rain streams

  down your cheeks

  directly upon you

  the hurrying

  centres of the storm unite

  MONASTIC LIFE 7

  It is gone. The last twenty monks left in a bus for a house somewhere north. Praise songs no longer climb the white pines. Prayers no longer smoke evening skies. No monk bows south to the lake or beats his gaunt breast for trespasses past. No confessions within the scent of the shore. No sheep in the barns. No apiary, no fat-sided bees. Only apples hang heavy from branches – and fall.

  Night galloped through cloisters, cracked stones from the walls, trampled gardens of lavender and mint. Once, two hundred obeyed their vocations or their own mother’s hearts. So many chants. So many white robes. In their small well-waxed cells, devotions and the splitting of hypothetical hairs. So much cider; there was honey and cream.

  MONASTIC LAKE

  Liturgical in its way, the lake unfolds, arising in wavelets in morning, changing with weather or time of day, without evidence of sorrow or blame. The water claims nothing for itself. Without hue or clear shape, it allows what gathers around it – air’s blue, palimpsests of horsetail in flight. Mud washes in from the Ottawa’s tongue, silting through. Summer sun beats the water to bronze. Where rocks curve, the lake bends. It sinks to its depths, evaporates or floods according to season and year. Even its storms bequeath hush. Scent of fish dying, algal bloom, clams broken on shore. Anything that passes through is transformed. Who watches, finally revealed. How self submerges itself, metaphor for mystery, drowning, escape.

  WHAT'S UNDER

  fish down there tadpoles smallmouth bass

  red-eyed bicycle tires musky pike

  walleye and drum

  a fishing hut that fell through the ice four years ago

  three cases of beer the owner out for a leak

  made it to shore

  perch sunfish catfish rosary beads bibles

  carp bullets the sturgeon finally returned

  they bump around in the murk

  nose a ten-horsepower motor

  a rotary phone

  garpike down there and minnows in shallows

  risking jars and small nets

  minnows like sudden cartoons

  the neighbour fishes

  but not through the ice

  wood ducks in spring dabble

  feet paddle the water

  mallards all summer long tipping up

  going down

  EIGHT MILES TO THE CENTER

  You watch how water accommodates wind,

  how the lake turns direction, curls

  its lips white, turns colour, almost

  opaque, from root-brown to light nickel-grey,

  textured and fringed, turns its mind

  to the shore.

  In the middle of things

  you’ve been given a place.

  Eight miles to the centre.

  What difference if the lake changes –

  or if you belong? This water,

  this spring-flooded land, cannot happen

  in exile. The lake you are left with:

  algae, neon-lime silk, skeins of it, spun

  out of nowhere, untroubled cumulus blooms.

  SUN GOING DOWN

  Nine o’clock, the hour of the sun

  going down, listing to the south.

  The drowsing dark lake

  shushes itself on the shore.

  Divinity lingering this way.

  Nine o’clock, the hour of fox

  on the move. Hour of closing,

  the sky closing over,

  heat losing its hold.

  Fox stealing slow

  as the sun,

  going down

  to the shore,

  looking for fish.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Lorna Crozier, my caring and exacting MFA supervisor, who encouraged and guided Lake of Two Mountains from its inception. Without her, this project simply would not have been realized. Appreciation also to other members of the University of Victoria’s Creative Writing Department, both fellow students and faculty, especially Tim Lilburn and John Barton. Much gratitude to Sue Chenette, my very thoughtful editor, who helped to shape the final version. To my sister, Donna Sharkey, who understands the childhood experience of the Lake better than anyone I know, many thanks for being there. Thanks to the people of L’Île-Cadieux, especially the mayor, his wife and the town’s secretary for their efforts to find accommodation for me; Pat for her friendship; and Lucille and Francois for their hospitality. And always, enduring gratefulness to Chris Fox, my companion and first reader for so many years.

  Thanks also to Ursula Veira of Leaf Press, editor of the chapbook anthology, What Else Could I Dare to Say, where “Whether Wind” first appeared.

  Biographical Note

  Arleen Paré is a poet and novelist with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria. Her first book, Paper Trail, won the Victoria Butler Book Prize and was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay B.C. Book Award for Poetry. Her second book was a mixed-genre novel entitled Leaving Now. Paré’s writing has appeared in several Canadian literary journals and anthologies. Originally from Montreal, she lived for many years in Vancouver, where she worked asa social worker and administrator to provide community housing for people with mental illnesses. She now livesin Victoria with her partner, Chris Fox.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Paré, Arleen, author

  Lake of two mountains [electronic resource] / Arleen Paré.

  ISBN 978-1-926829-87-6 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS8631.A7425L35 2014 C811’.6 C2013-907368-X

  Copyright © Arleen Paré 2014.

  We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

  Cover image, design and layout by Cheryl Dipede.

  The author photo was taken by Ryan Rock.

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  London, Ontario N6K 4G6

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